India’s Monsoon is Delayed For Third Year in a Row — Climate Change is Likely Cause

“It has been observed that since 2001, places in northern India, especially in Rajasthan, are witnessing a rising temperature trend every year. The main reason is the excessive … emission of carbon dioxide.” — Laxman Singh Rathore, the director general of the India Meteorological Department.

*****

The reduction in India’s monsoon rains is a big deal. It generates systemic drought, creates a prevalence for heatwaves, and locally amplifies the impacts of human-caused climate change. For three years now, the Indian monsoon has been delayed. India is experiencing its worst heatwaves ever recorded and water shortages across the country are growing dire. The monsoonal rains are coming, again late. And people across India — residents as well as weather and climate experts — are beginning to wonder if the endemic drought and heat stress will ever end.

Historically, there was only one climate condition known to bring about a delay in India’s Monsoon — El Nino. And last year, a strong El Nino is thought to have contributed both to the Monsoon’s late arrival and to a very severe drought that is now gripping the state. What the 2015 El Nino cannot also account for is the 2014 delay and weakening of monsoonal rains. And during 2016, as India’s monsoon has again been held back by 1-2 weeks, and El Nino is now but a memory, it’s beginning to become quite clear that there’s something else involved in the weakening of India’s annual rains.

Indian Monsoon Delayed Third Year in a Row

(Onset of the Indian Monsoon has been delayed for three years in a row now. A condition likely caused by a human-forced warming of the world and one that is worsening an extreme drought and heatwave situation across the country. Image source: The India Meteorological Department.)

As of today, the eastern edge of the Southeast Asian monsoon had only advanced to the middle of Myanmar. This late progress is two weeks behind the typical advance of the monsoon in this part of the world at this time of year. Further west, the monsoon has extended somewhat futher — only trailing the typical monsoon’s advance by 5 days along the western coast of India.

With La Nina blooming in the Eastern Pacific, there’s no other climatological excuse for this delay. The El Nino influence is mostly gone. And all that’s left is a global climate context in which temperatures have now risen to around 1.3 C hotter than 1880s averages.

Climate Change is Likely Cause

Scientific studies modeling the impacts of human-forced warming have long found that heating the Earth atmosphere resulted in an eventual delay and weakening of the Indian monsoon. A study published last year in Geoscience Frontiers continued this line of study. Global Circulation Model (GCM) runs found that the Indian monsoon was expected to be delayed by 15 days on average during the 21st Century due to human caused climate change. That the amount of precipitation provided by the monsoon would be reduced by about 70 percent. And that the eastern section of the monsoon would tend to be subject to greater delays than the west.

(Extreme heat in the range of 45 to 51 degrees Celsius [113 to 124 degrees Fahrenheit] is expected to continue to impact a broad region of Northern India and Eastern Pakistan tomorrow. These temperatures are in record ranges and threaten to again break the all-time hottest temperatures ever recorded in India this week. By now, the onset of monsoonal rains should be taking the edge off a good portion of this heat. But a monsoon apparently delayed by a human forced warming of the world still holds back its cooling loads of moisture. Image source: Earth Nullschool.)

Delays in the Indian Monsoon result in a loss of precipitation due to the fact that the duration of the event is greatly reduced. Rainfall has to therefore be more intense over a shorter period of time in order to make up for losses. Increasing drought prevalence results in further moisture losses due to a kind of atmospheric heat and dryness barrier that tends to sap storms of precipitation even as they start to form. The net result for India is a prediction of severe moisture loss due to human-caused climate change.

This year’s India monsoonal delay — as with the delay during 2014 — falls into that pattern. And the massive drought that India is now experiencing as a result appears to be emerging from a set of atmospheric conditions that are consistent with human-caused climate change. India’s risk for continued drought and increasingly extreme heatwaves over the coming years is therefore on the rise. And it is yet to be seen if this year’s monsoon will deliver the hoped-for and desperately-needed relief. Already, the rain-bearing storm system is lagging. And that’s not a good sign.

138 Comments

wili

The question is — how do you keep 1.3 billion Indians alive and well fed under these changing conditions? How do you prevent state destabilization and a resultant mass migration that will make what’s happening in the Middle East look like a tempest in a teapot by comparison? That’s what resiliency planners need to be looking at.

Bill H

There’s certainly not much recognition of the causes of mass migration in my country, the UK, at the moment. Here the popular scapegoat for the “migration crisis” impacting on Europe is …. the European Union. Yes, a lot of people are saying that if it wasn’t for the EU there would be no crisis – nothing to do with years-long droughts or the Middle East. The underlying arguments for or against the UK remaining in the EU are complex, but the amount of petty-mindedness on display in the face of climate change related disasters is heart breaking.

Cate

“The Channel is the new Mediterranean” quipped an observer in a BBC report on the increasing numbers of migrants crossing clandestinely by boat or dinghy from mainland Europe to England, mainly to ports on the south and east coasts.

How much longer before the Atlantic is the new Mediterranean, I wonder, before these new “boat people” start arriving on our shores, either because they embarked direct in the Med, or were waved through to European ports and onwards to North America.

Ryan in New England

I recall reading years back how India was very concerned about immigration from Bangladesh when climate change gets worse. Here we are a few years down the road and those border fences India wanted are just holding in well over a billion increasingly desperate people.

Jimmy

i was thinking that perhaps the increased heat energy in the atmosphere is pushing the descending air of Hadley cells a bit further to the north. That and the topography of the Tibetan plateau would greatly alter the summer monsoon season in India. It seems likely to me that if this is the case then in time India will barely experience any summer monsoons at all.

Ryan in New England

LONDON—Scientists in the US claim to have beaten nature at its own game. They have created a “bionic leaf” that exploits sunlight to create biomass—and they say their invention is now 10 times more effective than an oak or maple leaf.

Two separate laboratories at Harvard University have co-operated to devise, enhance and test a system that uses sunlight to split water molecules and feed the hydrogen to bacteria that then produce liquid fuels. The next task is to scale up the experiment to produce carbon neutral fuels to combat climate change.

Andy in SD

Many small farmers without the financial means needed to mitigate these changes has been the source of a tremendous number of suicides. Many are in debt and survive marginally when things are normal. One bad year can crush them, 3 years of drought finishes them off.

In India, two consecutive years of weak monsoons have left some 330 million people — a quarter of the country — in the grip of drought. Deepening the crisis, farmers are taking their lives.

Bhagyashree’s brother-in-law, Dnyaneshwar Jadhav, says his brother Tukaram was distraught over loans he’d taken out to stay afloat in the face of his withered crops.

Private money-lenders charged his brother usurious interest rates and pulled him under, Dnyaneshwar says. “He paid as much as 50 percent interest on his loans and he couldn’t get out of the cycle or talk about it.”

Jay M

Seems like one of the important questions is how has thermal mass of the oceans been increasing. This is resulting in coral bleaching and anomalous conditions that feed into the lazy jet stream of late. Most of the blanketed energy has gone into the water.

June

“Climate Signals and “Demystifying Climate Change”: Two Great New Resources”

[The Climate Signals website] offers a quick and handy way to explore the climate change elements that are most pertinent to a given extreme event…

For journalists, policy makers, or any other interested parties delving into such high-profile events as Hurricane Sandy or the multi-year California drought, Climate Signals will serve as a convenient and easy-to-navigate starting point. Peer-reviewed attribution studies–which are referenced throughout the Climate Signals site–are the place to dig deeper when researching how much a given facet of climate change may have influenced a particular extreme event. We also found that the Real Time Data page–which contains over 50 links to various websites on current extreme temperatures, rainfall, storms, drought, fire, sea level, insect activity, snow, and ice–is a fantastic resource for researching the real-time impacts of extreme weather.

Jay M

redskylite

Mr Scribbler, thanks for keeping us attuned to all the nuances of Climate Change, it is easy to get transfixed on smaller areas (like the Arctic) and forget all the terrible global consequences. The monsoon is the lifeblood of India and disruption to it is devastating.

The third pole features a related article on the source of the Ganga today.

“With ten Indian States reeling under drought and the country facing a severe water crisis after two weak monsoons, the disappearing freshwater sources such as the Himalayan glaciers is worrying. And though a three-kilometre retreat over two centuries might seem insignificant at first glance, data shows that the rate of retreat has increased sharply since 1971. The rate of retreat is now 22 metres per year.”

” … data shows that the rate of retreat has increased sharply since 1971.”

– My personal observations tell me that some stark indications of extreme change in the climate were manifesting themselves in the PNW in the early seventies. As was society’s ability to ignore, or deny, them.
I recall Robert saying something similar, at least the climate changes.
Am trying to put together a narrative of my own observations and analysis — many aspects are involved.

Dan Borroff

In 1967 we visited Mt. Rainier for the first time. The glaciers were in dramatic retreat at that time. A bridge on the road to Paradise had been built over the Nisqually Glacier. By 1967 the terminus of the glacier was more than 500 feet above the bridge. A few years later, drawn to beauty of the Cascades, I moved to Seattle (via a short detour through Portland). Glacial ice in the North Cascades exceeded all the glaciers and snowfields in the rest of the lower 48 states combined. Everywhere I went in the backcountry the ice was in obvious retreat. One year I did the arduous bushwhacking hike to the glacial research station at South Cascade glacier. Bare rock, a clear sign of rapid ice retreat, extended from the snout of the glacier for 1/4 mile. The glacier was several miles long. Glacial research vehicles on the ice were barely visible from the marginal ridge where the station was located, mid glacier. Today Google Earth shows the glacier has been reduced by half. The bare rock and rubble field covers a greater area than the glacier. I have a vivid memory of the quality of the air above the glacier. It seemed diamond dusted, enchanting. Its loss is something to mourn.

Mulga Mumblebrain

redskylite, as the BBC story makes clear, near the end (if you’ve read that far) any impression that one million is the extent of Indian famine deaths under the English rule is totally mistaken. Mike Davis’s ‘Late Victorian Holocausts’, which also investigates the role of El Nino in Indian droughts and famines makes it very clear that the death-roll was vastly greater. And the last of the man-made famines was in Bengal in the WW2 years, and probably killed six to ten million, eerily equivalent to the Nazi exterminations in eastern Europe.

India plans to introduce a 25 percent tax on sugar exports to maintain local supplies, the government said on Thursday, a move that could further push up global prices of the sweetener and boost shipments from Thailand.

” … data shows that the rate of retreat has increased sharply since 1971.”

Am trying to put together a narrative of my own observations and analysis — many aspects are involved.

‘Suspended apprehension’

For now, I preface my observations with a word about my own form of denial, etc.
The best term I have come up with is: suspended apprehension. This since about 1972-73 — and continuing through, and up to, today.

Penny Laskey

Colorado Bob

Though June is generally the start of the rainy season in Venezuela, much of the country remains drier than normal, a moisture deficit that affects the country’s capacity to generate electricity and is aggravating a severe economic recession that is prompting looting, protests, and violence.

For three years, according to the Ministry of Electricity, Venezuela’s rainfall has measured 50 percent to 65 percent lower than normal. Drought conditions, according to the country’s meteorologists, are the worst they’ve been in at least 40 years.

The rainfall deficit affects almost all of the country, and is particularly serious in Bolivar, site of the 10,323-megawatt Guri hydroelectric plant, which supplies more than 60 percent of the country’s electricity. The Guri station, at full operating capacity, is the third largest hydropower station in the world, according to Powertechnology.com, a trade news organization. Today, it is far, far from full capacity.

June

Thanks for this. Latin America is particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts on hydropower, and will need to change their focus – see this article from last year.

“How will Latin America deal with its hydropower problem”

…”Small scale hydroelectric projects, wind and solar are more resilient to climate change than large centralized dams and have less severe impacts on the environment. They are also cheaper to operate and more likely to reach rural areas not connected to a centralized national grid.”

Wherever climate refugees go is likely to have its own climate problems.

The European heat wave of 2003 tells us that Europe is also now has the potential for deadly heat waves. The Russian heat wave of 2010 tells us that even Siberia is not a safe haven from AGW. Add in high population pressures from large numbers of climate refugees from the tropics, and AGW in the Northern Hemisphere takes on sharp toothed realism.

Currently, North America and Europe need products from Central America, South
Asia, and Africa. If large populations from Central America, South Asia, and Africa migrate to North America and Europe, then those needs will go up, but the sources of such products will vastly diminish.

We are not honestly considering either the practical, or the ethical issues of near term AGW. The death toll as people flee the ME and Africa is just as much a measure of AGW as the death tolls from heat waves and kidney damage to Central American agricultural workers.

Colorado Bob

1 Big Oil Company That’s Making Climate Change a PriorityHow is big oil going to make the transition to a cleaner energy future? One company is outlining its plans in a new report. ……………………. One company has taken a more advanced look at climate change and is already changing its business model as a result. Total (NYSE:TOT), the French oil giant that’s the #4 oil & gas producer worldwide recently released a report called “Integrating Climate into our Strategy” and it’s putting money where its mouth is when it comes to adapting to the reality of climate change in energy. Here’s a look at how it could pay off for investors.

Colorado Bob

30 years ago scientists warned Congress on global warming. What they said sounds eerily familiar

Thirty years ago, on June 10 and 11 of 1986, the U.S. Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works commenced two days of hearings, convened by Rep. John H. Chafee (R-R.I.), on the subject of “Ozone Depletion, the Greenhouse Effect, and Climate Change.”

“This is not a matter of Chicken Little telling us the sky is falling,” Chafee said at the hearing. “The scientific evidence … is telling us we have a problem, a serious problem.”

I read that article and it just makes me crazy. We have been fiddling while Rome burns..knowing for so many years the dangers of a warming earth…and our leaders continue to put their heads in the sand, all the while supporting the fossil fuel industry.
What a short sighted species we are…and evolution may take care of the problem for us. The planet will survive, in some form, however we may not.

June

New and higher radioactivity limits for drinking water tainted in the case of a nuclear emergency were put forward by the Environmental Protection Agency this week, a move that environmental organizations are calling “egregious.”

According to environmentalists, the new PAG (Protective Action Guide) would allow iodine-131 limits to be 3,450 times higher than now permitted, while for strontium-90 there would be a 925 increase.

– Fossil Fuel Air Pollution — More sordid history of an immoral and corrupt gas and oil industry. The whole culture reeks of pure evil even as it has ingrained itself in the larger polity.
Smog may kill but oil and cars sell.
Not much has changed except the growing danger to us all.

For Oil Industry, Clean Air Fight Was Dress Rehearsal for Climate Denial

Through the Smoke and Fumes Committee, industry blurred the science surrounding air pollution and worked to forestall unwanted regulation

When the smog plaguing Los Angeles reached distressing levels in the early 1950s, the city hired Arie Haagen-Smit to study the cause. Not only was Haagen-Smit a scientist specializing in airborne microscopic chemicals, he was also angry about the state of the city’s air. His work swiftly determined that the culprit was oil.

Following a hunch, Haagen-Smit built an unorthodox laboratory that accurately demonstrated how nitrogen oxide and uncombusted hydrocarbons from tailpipes and refineries react in sunlight to produce smog. His findings unnerved oil companies, which feared onerous regulation would follow. So when another scientist, Harold Johnston, challenged Haagen-Smit’s findings, the industry’s main consulting group hired him.

“They said terrible things about Haagen-Smit…I was given the job of overthrowing his theory entirely,” Johnston recalled in an oral history years later. “I rapidly concluded that Haagen-Smit was a genius!”

That wasn’t what the oil industry wanted to hear. It shelved Johnston’s work and let his contract lapse. Then it conducted its own research to discredit Haagen-Smit’s conclusions and manufacture doubt around the link between oil and smog.

[Another industrious Charles Keeling type;]
– Caltech scientist Arie Haagen-Smit (pictured) discovered in the early 1950s that oil was the cause of the dangerous smog shrouding L.A. Industry then conducted its own research to discredit Haagen-Smit’s findings and manufacture doubt around the link between oil and smog. It continues to fight attempts to tighten smog regulation. Photo courtesy of the California Institute of Technology

“How the oil industry handled smog is a template for how it handled a bunch of issues, the most significant being climate change. There’s a DNA here that’s palpable,” said Carroll Muffett, an attorney who is the president of the watchdog group, Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL). “Through it all, you see the creation of an echo chamber of doubt that takes the small unknowns and uncertainties and magnifies it until all we have is unknowns, when in fact the actual science isn’t that way at all.”

Colorado Bob

A Duke University study of coal ash ponds near 21 power plants in five Southeastern U.S. states has found evidence that nearby surface waters and groundwater are consistently and lastingly contaminated by the unlined ponds.

High levels of toxic heavy metals including arsenic and selenium were found in surface waters or groundwater at all of the sites tested. Concentrations of trace elements in 29 percent of the surface water samples exceeded EPA standards for drinking water and aquatic life.

“In all the investigated sites, we saw evidence of leaking,” said Avner Vengosh, a professor of geochemistry and water quality in Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment. “Some of the impacted water had high levels of contaminants.”

The study, which appears June 10 in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, did not test drinking water wells, but that will be the next phase of the research, Vengosh said.

Colorado Bob

Solar Impulse 2, which flew over the Statue of Liberty on its historic solar-powered global journey Saturday, continues to prove the vast potential of renewable energy, according to pilot Bertrand Piccard.

The plane landed at New York’s JFK airport at 4 a.m. ET on Saturday, completing the 14th leg of its trip.

Colorado Bob

A broader question “Burma to Pakistan” .
Thought experiment –
They all cross the highest mountains in the World to the highest desert on Earth ?
And invade Russia.
They all get in boats and sail to the Mideast ?
They all get in boats and sail to Africa ?
They all get in boats and sail to Australia?

todaysguestis
This entire “free trade” makes us all rich theory , is about collapse. . We all see it here.
Everyday.
Take the Thailand Floods. Honda lost all of it’s production for months.

This entire effort to convert the natural world into money is falling on it’s ass.

And Money is pure construct of the mind of man , no where in Nature does “Money” appear.

Profit motive is mostly destructive and has driven us to this pass. I’d like to see a goods motive. As in, a motive to do things in such a way that improves not just individual well being, but everyone’s well being. And we need to motive to help everyone, everything living on the Earth to be front and center if we’re going to survive this mess. The whole system right now is built to make a profit. It needs to be steadily reconstructed to generate goods, well-being, and to prevent and reduce harm.

So the issue for India is a combination of heat, water and food. Not just heat. But what heat does to people, to water supplies and to food. The article above only seems to consider the impact of heat on individual humans. Not heat on human systems like power generation for air conditioning for example.

I’d venture that India driven by centralized fossil fuel based power and feeding their people in the current fashion would not exist at the 3-4 C climate threshold and begins to suffer mass migration pressure now. We are already seeing mass farmer suicides from drought pressure and loss of water. This year, we’ve already had a big wave of migration from the rural regions and into the cities. This pattern is similar to what we’ve seen in Bangladesh.

The problem is that city resiliency is also hit by climate change. You’ve got to have more resilient cities that have greatly reduced externalities and resource footprints going forward if we want to prevent big waves of migrations. The thing is we don’t have much time to achieve this.

Genomik

I was debating a climate denier recently and after wasting a bunch of time i said put your money where your mouth is. Ill bet you $100 California will have drier years compared to the average of the 20th century. They tried to wiggle out of it but would not take the bet. They kept coming up w the BS th CC deniers do i kept saying if you talk the talk, walk the walk. They would not take the bet.

Then i went to another CC denier I know and asked him to bet. Nope.

Another guy who was watching thread commented thats an interesting way to fight them. I pointed out it may also be a good way to make money! Either they dont believe what they say so they wont take the bet OR if they do, Ill take their money.

I also offered that it doesny need to be money, it could be a charity of your choice, mine might be a climate related group, theirs might be a Bezelbub worshipping group.

I think this is an intriguing way to fight against them. Anybody have any experience like this? IS there any online betting? I know there is longbets by the longnow foundation but thats a little different.

I thought of this as talk is cheap, but wastes time, which makes it expensive. A good way to save time and embarass a CC denier is to bet them.

Ryan in New England

I like that, Genomik. It shows that deniers don’t even believe their own BS. Just like the professional deniers who refuse to take Bill Nye’s bet, they know damn well they are lying because they know who it is that writes their checks.

Ryan in New England

I think it’s nuts that we tear up the natural surroundings and cover our landscapes, our homes and even ourselves in oil. The vehicles we drive run on oil. The roads we drive on are comprised of oil. The residences we come home to are often covered in oil (asphalt shingles, vinyl siding, Azek trim (which is plastic), the housewrap vapor barrier is often oil-based). Even our clothing is increasingly made of plastics, as more and more are made from synthetic fibers. Not to mention that almost every purchase we make is somehow wrapped in oil. We are completely surrounded by oil and every step that took us to this point has been more insane than the previous one.

Cate

I have often wondered this, and it’s probably a stupid question, but if we do manage to get to zero fossil fuel extraction, what about all the things we use, as Ryan mentions, that are made from petroleum by-products? What about plastics, for example? Will we still extract oil to make all that stuff, or do we invent new materials to replace the petroleum-based ones….?

Plastics create their own problems. We’d be better off with majority biodegradables. But to do that sustainably you need to return to hemp as a widely used raw material. As an example, you can make plastic-like substances out of hemp and corn starch. You just have to get land use right. Vertical farming and a transition to non meat helps.

In the end, though, if you’re looking at carbon emissions — it’s mostly an issue of fossil fuel burning. The materials side is less emissions intensive and there are viable resplacements for about 80 percent of the fossil fuel based products. Net fossil fuel use for materials is about 15 percent. So you can cut out the 85 percent burned without having to worry about materials in any case. If fossil fuels wished to remain viable as a raw material, they’d need to re-work the refinement process. But the more I look at this, the more I think it’s more an opportunity to make more sustainable materials than a problem. That it’s more an issue of marketing that has resulted in so many fossil fuel based substances working their way into modern life.

Colorado Bob

The right wing has convinced us we all live on a “Money Planet” , we don’t We live on the Earth. 3 rocks from the Sun. And this is it. Unless all the deniers move to Venus. Where CO2 is trace gas. And they build a right wing utopia. Where the laws of physics are over come by right wing dogma.

Cate

Spotted today in Twilingate on the NE coast of Newfoundland, a number of good-sized proper icebergs displaying the signature green-blue colour and marble-like appearance of the real deal—glacial ice, calved in Greenland. (Chances are good, for example, that the majority of the bergs that infest our waters originate in Jakobshavn, on the west coast of Greenland.)

One berg in particular caught my eye: grounded in a cove a few hundred feet offshore, the visible bulk of this berg seemed to equal two or three large houses, with a lot more underwater, of course. It was clearly on its side, though, as it was displaying a most curious even black layer, of dirt or sediment, that ran vertically from the water line, across the undulating top of the berg, and back down into the water. This layer of rock, dirt, or whatever, looked to be about two-three feet thick throughout its length. I wondered how it came to be sandwiched between two layers of possibly very old ice. Were there ever volcanic eruptions in Greenland? Could it be the residue of melt run-off from another warm period? How old it might in fact be—a few hundred, perhaps a thousand years old, or more? Where’s a glaciologist when you need one! 😀

Cate

So from what I’ve been able to google-glean, it’s probably volcanic ash. The thing is, the line was solid and dark, with no staining or leaching into the ice, so that tells me it’s got to be compacted really hard, rock-hard, probably, and therefore, pretty old. So where and when it came from are anyone’s guess.

Colorado Bob

305. JEBTucson
Nothing in the record compares to us.
We are digging up 320 million year old shale gas, and burning it. Along with every other time frame the Earth buried carbon atoms. The coal atoms are 100 millions years later. The Saudi oil atoms are over 200 million years later, The Periman Basin oil 250 million years.

Now, after the growth of a natural gas production operation commonly known as fracking, the United States is producing more methane emissions than any country in the world. And in a complaint submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of the Inspector General on Wednesday, a small North Carolina watchdog group argues persuasively that the government might not know how much is released into the sky as a result of drilling and storage of gas extracted from shale deep under ground.

The 68-page complaint by NC Warn accuses the EPA of allowing untold levels of methane into the atmosphere by allowing oil and gas companies to monitor emissions with a pricey device that’s faulty. The group says in its complaint that the agency knows the $20,000, backpack-sized Bacharach Hi-Flow Sampler doesn’t work well because the man who invented the technology that inspired it blew a whistle years ago.

Hilary

Colorado Bob

Yeah. Considering how much effort goes into selling bad thinking generally, I often find myself lamenting what we could have achieved if people were more perceptive, reasonable, and discerning. But most of all if there wasn’t so much effort put into selling deception.

There are still 2.5 million votes to be counted in California, and this could have an unknown effect on the California primary – and Bernie Sanders’ delegate count. People given provisional ballots may include many Bernie Sanders supporters, because young people are often more mobile, and independent voters may tend to be renters and so more mobile than homeowners. So the uncounted votes could heavily favor Bernie Sanders.

The total ballots counted in the California primary will climb, from about 6 million to about 8.5 million.

When my wife and I went to vote, she noticed that the six people immediately in front of her in line were given provisional ballots, because they were “not on the list”.

When I went to vote, I saw two people also given provisional ballots. The election workers stressed that they would be able to vote – but did not say that there would be a delay in counting the votes and if their voter information is uncertain or unverifiable their vote may not be counted.

Bernie Sanders is doing the right thing in staying in the race. He’s getting huge pressure in the media to unify the party – but there is time for that after the votes have been counted, I think.

The California provisional ballot system may falsely favor more conservative, settled voters, and discriminate against the young, more mobile, and independent voters – so skewing the results for Hillary and against Bernie.

I hope that Bernie stays in the race, until all the votes are counted and in fact through the convention.

Dave person

Hi Leland,
I disagree. We need Bernie in the Senate not side lined as a VP in an administration that will very likely side line him. We need Elizabeth Warren in the Senate unless it is assured that a Democrat would succeed her in the Senate. We need as many democratic house and senate members as we can get to control those bodies so that the next president can do something about climate change, select a progressive supreme court judge, keep EPA , USDI, USDA, and USDOE on track for environmental protection, renewable energy generation, and push the Paris Accord. We need senators and representatives that will keep Clinton on track progressively from outside her administration.

Can’t imagine Bernie would be willing to be VP. Even if he agreed to an offer (I would be shocked) I don’t believe he could accomplish much in that role given the job description for veeps. It would seem to be just a move to “unite the party” without much substance:

Which all raises the question, just how much power does the veep officially have?

“The Constitution gives the vice president the role of presiding over the Senate, and voting in the Senate if there is a tie. The vice president’s only other formal responsibility is taking over the presidency if the president dies.
“That’s about it in terms of the formal role,” said Paul Brace, a political scientist at Rice University in Texas who researches presidential history. “For many years, there was such lopsided control of the Senate, the tie-breaking vote never really came into play. Traditionally it’s a pretty meaningless role. It’s not something that allows you to exercise a lot of power.”

If Hillary really wants to unify the party she would call for and try to activate an immediate investigation into the voting problems that occurred all over this country. She would help get to the truth about the votes in California. I don’t know about you, but I would have a problem claiming victory with millions of votes still uncounted in California.

If she really wants to unify the party Hillary will state definitively that she will impose a carbon tax (and will work with Sanders and groups like Citizen’s Climate lobby to make that happen), ban fracking (again, work with Sanders and other groups to do this), raise the minimum wage to 15 dollars an hour and state definitively that she will oppose the TPP and other destructive trade agreements.

As Bernie Sanders has stated repeatedly:
“We still have 35 million Americans without insurance. We need to join the rest of the industrialized world. We are the only major country on Earth that doesn’t guarantee health care to all people as a right.”

If this damaging “health care” system does not change, it will only exacerbate all of the problems our country is facing. Unless you’re into population control via poor health care! This is a serious threat to the health and well being for most that are not wealthy.
People are literally dying that are PAYING for “health care” yet can’t afford medication and/or necessary tests/treatments.

Personal note: I may have to leave this country because I cannot afford health insurance and have quite a few more years to go before medicare. I am a vegetarian, into wholistic health, physically fit but this isn’t enough to thwart genetic health problems. I still need medical science.

To keep paying into this pathological system disgusts me. I have BCBS. In 2012 my premiums were $980 every 2 months. 2 weeks ago (with dread and a nauseating feeling in my stomach), I opened their latest mailing: “due to increasing cost of care” etc. etc. “your premium is now $1,400 every 2 months.
I have a $5,000 deductible. That is close to 14,000 a year for health insurance!!! That is about half the cost of ONE of Hillary Clinton’s designer jackets (snopes confirmed one of her Armani jackets cost between $7,000 and $12,000). Think about that. She thinks the system is working just fine—-just needs a few tweaks.

I am certainly not alone with high premiums/high deductibles. Many people feel trapped, scared and many are in ill health. We have to just keep writing the checks to the health insurance companies who have us by the throats . . what choice do we have?

Looked into the website for a less expensive plan via “Obamacare”. Sure, you can get less expensive coverage but try finding a doctor/hospital who accepts it! And the coverage isn’t 100% after deductible which means you are one major illness away from bankruptcy. They don’t tell you that on the unAffordable Health care web site.

Bernie has been the only one speaking to all these important issues that must be addressed. He has been the only candidate (other than Jill Stein) calling for a carbon tax,a ban on fracking and getting money out of politics. That —-to me—–is the epitome of the GOOD cop.

And lastly, for what it’s worth . . .. Hillary Clinton is still under FBI investigation. I have a hard time understanding how people can throw their full support behind someone (who is supposed to lead by example) that is being investigated for potentially significant crimes. This is not just a “right wing conspiracy theory”. I have a hard time comprehending how Hillary can run for president in good conscience. Seriously, can you imagine being under investigation by the FBI and running for president? I don’t think I could run for county board with that hanging over my head and in my psyche. I would want to lead by example and ignoring/dismissing the rules is not a good example in ANY job let alone Secretary of State of the U.S.

I have to say that I agree wholeheartedly with a lot of this and that these are good points. I’d also like to add that with respect to Clinton’s emails, comment on the bottom, I think that Obama and the DNC should work to address this issue immediately if Clinton is going to be the nominee at the convention. Obama has given his endorsement, but an ongoing FBI investigation that may last throughout the election and not find results until we have a sitting President does things —

1. Gives Trump supporters fire to continuously harass Clinton and
2. May render Clinton illegitimate if the FBI rules in a way that is more harsh than many now expect

And I’d like to add that Hillary winning the election, in my opinion, will require her to take stances that are more similar to those of Bernie on a number of these key issues. And that’s one reason why I’ve pushed so hard to have Bernie as a running mate. While Hillary may be a political pragmatist/operator who’s good at navigating the Washington and International political structures, Bernie is basically the soul of the party. And we shouldn’t lose sight of that.

Hillary was always going to be tough to beat for a number of reasons. But she’s tough to support too due to baggage that absolutely needs to be addressed.

1. RE votes, we should be clear, though, that the numbers coming in indicate that Bernie lost this and that Bernie never had a majority popular vote support in the polls. We should be realistic when looking at these numbers and not set ourselves up for over-reach, but maintain the strongest bargaining position possible. This was the same system that elected Barack Obama as party leader. Bernie lacked enough appeal among women overall and African American voters in general to tip the scales and that’s why he lost. Some voting issues may have tilted the election toward Hillary. But the issues resulted in marginal gains if any and were not enough to account for the millions of votes lead accorded to Hillary. This is born out in national polling data which has consistently shown Hillary leading Bernie. So we should be very clear that Hillary won. Hillary won due to the fact that she had broader support. And that the primary election wasn’t ‘stolen’ from Bernie.

2. Of course, where there were issues that reduced involvement, then these should be rectified. But to keep talking about this as if it was some kind of active voter suppression effort is both untrue and unhelpful.

3. “If she really wants to unify the party Hillary will state definitively that she will impose a carbon tax (and will work with Sanders and groups like Citizen’s Climate lobby to make that happen), ban fracking (again, work with Sanders and other groups to do this), raise the minimum wage to 15 dollars an hour and state definitively that she will oppose the TPP and other destructive trade agreements.”

While I agree with this sentiment, I don’t think we can make demands like this and expect them to be implemented entirely. That said, I think there’s a lot of ground that can be gained here. Carbon tax may be doable. Unfortunately, I don’t think Hillary will impose a complete national fracking ban, but I think there is room for us to push to harden her stance on fracking — increasing the overall difficulty of engaging in the practice. A carbon tax would effectively curtail a good portion of fracking in any case. I’d rather have a ban, but given renewables increasing economic allure, the tax would be almost as effective. There’s probably room for us pushing Hillary’s minimum wage support higher, although I don’t know if we can get her to accept the $15 dollar mark. RE TPP, I think we can absolutely gain some ground here as Hillary is now obviously embarrassed by her past support of the deal. Trump will attack her on this. So that’s something to keep in mind as well.

These are big issues that resonate with the American people. If she wants to win, she will speak to these issues and add people to her campaign and Presidential staff who will work to rectify them.

5. “We still have 35 million Americans without insurance. We need to join the rest of the industrialized world. We are the only major country on Earth that doesn’t guarantee health care to all people as a right.”

We have a problem in that one political party will never support the single payer system combined with price controls that this country needs to keep healthcare affordable in this country. The Affordable Care Act added more coverage for more people but did this by forcing healthy people to pay more for coverage. There weren’t enough price controls to rectify a situation in which insurance companies would have to continue to raise premiums over time. In addition, the beveling in of the health insurance system to the provision of basic and emergency care needs continues to generate a middle man that adds 10-30 percent to price of care in this country.

We need price controls on care providers, drug providers, medical equipment providers and hospitals. We need provisions that disallow care providers from turning patients away (both for regular healthcare providers and for mental healthcare providers) And we need a single payer system linked to that if we are ever to really deal with all the problems. It would be a system in which insurers could offer premium coverage, but where the basics would be handled by the government as they are in most industrialized countries.

Hillary should deal with this head on. But she should also be very clear that a republican victory would result in the dismantling of Obama Care and the dumping of about 10 million sick people off of insurance rolls and back onto the emergency care system. That it would result in even more rapidly spiraling systemic costs than what we have seen under Obamacare. That Obamacare was a step in the right direction, but that if you want to rectify the entire issue you need a national healthcare policy that includes single payer and price controls.

This would be a tough haul for Hillary. But she needs to turn into the wind and make the sale.

6. The emails…

First I’ll say that the IG report was not sanguine. It found that Hillary Clinton bent the rules in such a way that was probably a bit outside of government policy. Powell also had a private email server and though Clinton’s use was somewhat similar to Powell’s it appears that she sailed much closer to the wind than that former Secretary of State. The IG aknowledges that there were issues and gray areas in the State Department email policy. And this may have helped to create a hole into which Clinton fell.

Clinton has publicly spun a number of the facts RE the email issue. From my view this does not inspire confidence. First, Clinton should be forthright RE the issue. Second, if there is the real possibility of an indictment, then I would think that the party should consider alternate options. Obama has given his endorsement and the party appears to be readying to support her at the convention. But I think that Clinton and democrats should be aware that the issue, if it goes south, could create a problem of legitimacy.

I think everyone needs to consider what the implications are of a presidential candidate on the democratic side who is the ongoing target of an FBI investigation. I think that would absolutely legitimize a 3rd party candidacy for Bernie Sanders, should he choose to go that route. Clinton and democrats need to put this to bed now and not allow it to be a lingering issue going forward.

“Of the voters surveyed who said they wanted a Democratic ballot rather than an NPP ballot, 58 percent said they would have voted for Sanders and 37 percent said they would have voted for Clinton, Mitchell said.

On Wednesday, a judge rejected a lawsuit by Sanders supporters who argued that rules for the state’s independent voters are unclear. The suit sought more time to register voters before the critical June 7 primary.”

I saw some of this confusion when I went to vote. A voter was given an NPP ballot, but brought it back to the polling station when he discovered there was no Presidential candidate listed on the ballot. The polling workers asked him several times if he wanted a Democratic ballot, and he finally said “yes” and was given such a ballot.

People taking the California primary results as a sign of – anything – might want to think again. Bernie Sanders may have had much more support in the state, and many more people wanting to vote for him, than either the primary results so far or the final primary results once a full count is made will show.

I think we should be making it easier for people to vote in the dem primaries, not harder. I think that this is a general problem across the country. In national elections, I think that voting should be made a civic obligation for all US citizens. The non participatory stuff causes big distortions.

I think Bernie should absolutely stay in as long as he can and bring as much influence to the convention as possible. And if he somehow manages to pull off a popular vote win nationally, then I think he should be the candidate. I also think that we as democrats should unify behind whoever wins. And that if Bernie does not win we should push for him or Warren as VP.

Not to mention Bernie’s fund raising ability and campaign organization, and his true advocacy of problems that really do need to be fixed. A Hillary / Bernie ticket would unite two world class campaign teams, and bury Trump, I hope to God.

Hillary’s whole Presidency could take the pattern of her being the Good Cop, to Bernie’s Bad Cop. It could really work, I think.

Most sane business people would and should be afraid to give money to Trump, lest he loose cannon us into ruinous wars and ignore the global warming problem until too late to do anything to stop it.

I can’t think of anyone who I would be more afraid of having his finger on the nuclear war trigger than Donald Trump.

maltose

Robert, there is no chance that Bernie can win the popular vote in the Dem primaries. I voted for Bernie in CA, but Hillary won 16 milion votes to 12.3 million for Bernie. We can’t be swayed by wishes, but by facts. The fact is Bernie struggled to win African-American votes and therefore lost Southern primaries by large margins. My hope is that Bernie can be VP, but I think it will be Kaine or Warren. Most likely Warren now, because of her going after Trump. The results of the primaries are here.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries,_2016

Thank Maltose. I was pretty certain that was the case. I still think that Bernie would be the better running mate, followed by Warren. Kaine is OK, but has little name recognition and less pull overall with progressives.

While importing oil from Canada has been controversial in the U.S., the devastating wildfires in Fort McMurray have served to underscore a larger issue: Natural disasters exacerbated by climate change can threaten major natural resources.

The wildfires in Alberta forced tar sands production to be cut by about a third, or 800,000 barrels per day in May, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data published this week. Alberta Energy Regulator data show that production averaged about 2.5 million barrels per day in March. Canada is the largest exporter of oil to the U.S, supplying about about 41 percent of U.S. crude oil imports, most of which comes from the Alberta oil sands.

Cate

One of the most immediate effects of the Fort Mac fires was that PetroCanada gas stations, most of which are in Western Canada and are supplied by Fort Mac oil, ran out of gas. This was temporary until alternate supplies could be had but still—a foretaste of things to come, perhaps.

The centralized power and fuel production systems of fossil fuels are more vulnerable to the impacts of human-caused climate change than distributed renewable energy systems. Renewables are both a mitigation and an adaptation in this respect.

“The centralized power and fuel production systems of fossil fuels are more vulnerable to the impacts of human-caused climate change than distributed renewable energy systems. Renewables are both a mitigation and an adaptation in this respect.”

Whoa, nice, had not really thought of that. Certainly true that wind and solar do not raise the risk of catastrophic failure like nuclear and hydro, but the tar sands fire does add a significant extra dimension.

Tar sands not only relies on a lack of wildfires (more dubious with each passing summer), but also on the steady flow of that Athabasca River.

Coal fired and gas fired power stations pretty much all sit on major water ways — read oceans and estuaries prone to sea level rise and rivers prone to drought and flooding. Hydro suffers due to increased water variability. Nuclear is at risk due to the same factors that put coal and gas at risk. However, it’s much harder to decommission a nuke plant than it is a gas plant.

Distributed power systems, from a climate change adaptation standpoint also distribute the load of damage coming from extreme events like wildfires and storms. They do not rely on major water sources that are vulnerable to the most extreme forms of disruption coming from climate change. They can also be protected by operators if proper forecasting is available and if the modular designs include the ability to rapidly remove vulnerable components ahead of powerful storms.

Add in the fact that renewables (wind and solar) use less water than pretty much any other power source and you have a second positive adaptation — energy that provides less strain on threatened fresh water supplies.

John B Davies

Hello Robert,
The late monsoons of the last 3 years have been influenced by the El Nino Event. In 2014 there were already El Nino tendencies, witness the fact that 2014 was the warmest year on record at that time. 2015 was an El Nino year. The 2016 Monsoon season was set up during the El Nino which has now just ended.

However I do agree that Global Warming is also playing a part in the delay of the Indian monsoon. The monsoon in 2017 and 2018 will probably be more normal as it will be influenced by the La Nina but from 2019 onwards when ENSO neutral conditions seem likely then the monsoon will probably be delayed by Global Warming. After that it looks bleak.

It’s pretty clear we’re starting to see an influence now. I agree that the trend will probably be in full swing by the 2020s. Like the SW US, this represents a problem with both national and global implications. From a threats standpoint, we need to be on top of it. It’s a threat in itself and a threat multiplier as well.

Kevin Jones

Hello all. (been offline busy…). GISS reports May 2016 at .95C above 1951-1980 Base Period. Appears previous record May was 2014 at .85C. In a rush but I believe this is the eighth record warmest month in a row for GISS. All the best. Will catch up on all you all’s great work asap.

Kevin Jones

Yeah. Jan-May ’16 is in at 1.16C above GISS 1951-1980 Base Period. 2015 finished at .87. 2014 at .74C. Three record annual global surface temperature records in a row seems now a sure thing. Which is a record itself….

The funding spanned trade associations, corporate lobby groups, and industry front groups as well as conservative thinktanks and was exposed in court filings last month.

The coal company also gave to political organisations, funding twice as many Republican groups as Democratic ones.

Peabody, the world’s biggest private sector publicly traded coal company, was long known as an outlier even among fossil fuel companies for its public rejection of climate science and action. But its funding of climate denial groups was only exposed in disclosures after the coal titan was forced to seek bankruptcy protection in April, under competition from cheap natural gas.

Environmental campaigners said they had not known for certain that the company was funding an array of climate denial groups – and that the breadth of that funding took them by surprise.

The people of Bokoshe, Okla., breathe coal ash being dumped nearby every day. They believe it’s causing widespread health problems and a rise in cancer deaths.

The wind that blows through Bokoshe, Okla. is an ominous one. A small, low-income town near the Arkansas border, Bokoshe sits in the shadow of a coal power plant. Its toxic byproduct, coal ash, is trucked daily to a nearby dump, and when the wind blows through town, that ash rains down on its residents. They believe it is to blame for the asthma and cancer that runs rampant there.

Startling new details emerge of the most mysterious of Siberia’s newly created giant permafrost holes.

First accounts of the gaping fissure in the earth – found by reindeer herders, who were almost swallowed up by the crater – reported that it was around 4 metres in width and ‘about 100 metres’ deep.

Scattered over a radius of one kilometre were lumps of displaced soil, sand and ice which had erupted from the earth.

Now we can reveal significant new details about this remote crater on the Taimyr peninsula in Krasnoyarsk region, some 440 kilometres from dozens of other newly-formed giant holes.

Firstly, respected scientist Dr Vladimir Epifanov, the sole leading expert to so far visit the site, said: ‘There is verbal information that residents of nearby villages – at a distance of 70-100 km – heard a sound like an explosion, and one of them watched a clear glow in the sky..
Locals wrongly suspected it was another exploding space object falling from the sky, it is believed. This is the first known account of the explosive sound, and a bright light in the sky for which – as yet – there seems no explanation.

Secondly, since the crater was formed in a 2013 blowout, the crater’s size rapidly increased at least 15 times during the next year and a half, according to previously unreported scientific data.

It is expected to be even wider now but no recent scientific surveys have been made to the remote site.

Our pictures show the so-called Deryabinsky crevice in snow soon after it was formed, when the hole was some four metres in width, and the latest known pictures which illustrate how it is now a lake, some 70 metres in diameter.

Thirdly, so rapidly is the landscape around the crater changing that experts predict the walls of the crater lake will soon collapse it will merge with a nearby long-established lake.

Whatever the original cause of the explosion heard over a vast area, the collapse is seen as being due to melting permafrost, and the walls of the crater caving in.

The height of the northern wall from the water level was measured as six metres, and the water depth 12 metres. The southern wall 10 metres in height, and the depth 18 metres: but it was not possible to measure the deepest point. As previously stated, the original hole was estimated as 100 metres deep.

Russia is monitoring by satellite the sites of potential new eruptions across huge swathes of the permafrost north of Siberia, amid suspicions that climate change has stoked a new natural phenomenon.

Prakash kadu

My heart goes out to everyone in India. We’re doing everything we can to lessen the bite of this problem. For my own part, I think that when one nation suffers, we all suffer. And when it comes to climate change, this is especially true as there’s no safe haven in the end if the burning continues.

La Nina looks like it may bring some relief. But it will probably be like the current El Nino’s affect on the US West Coast — enough to take some of the edge off, but not enough to halt a consistent warming and drying trend.

For the sake of India and the world we need to stop carbon emissions as fast as possible. We need to peak carbon emissions as soon as possible. And we need to help India and pretty much everyone become more resilient by reducing water footprints (wind, solar, water use recycling/efficiencies), by opening up new water resources, and by working to mitigate impacts to outdoor farmland (indoor vertical agriculture tied to renewable generation).